Jim Murphy’s “The Giant and How He Humbugged America” retells the tale of the Cardiff Giant, a profitable scam that fooled many Americans in 1869.

Paging all National History Day competitors! Here’s a topic that would be loads of fun: Explaining why so many gullible Americans fell for a sensational scam.

Author Jim Murphy chronologically traces the giant’s story from the day that it was discovered by a farmer in rural New York state. The massive figure was 10’4″ long with identifiable human details, including fingernails, toenails, muscles, ribs and an Adam’s apple. Was it a Stone Giant, one of the legendary beings from Onodaga Indian folklore?

It was christened the Cardiff Giant by local media, and the news went viral, in the context of 1869: the Syracuse Daily Standard estimated that within the first 24 hours after the figure was unearthed, over 10,000 people had heard about it. John Boynton, a local scientist and eccentric, publicly disputed the farmer’s claim of uncovering a petrified super-human, noting that the figure was a man-made statue, perhaps of limestone.